


Ginger

by N0L1M374NG3R3



Series: Huleth (bilingual) [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Desecrating Hubert, F/M, Female My Unit | Byleth, Hubert being a cold blooded douche, Hubert's hands, Implied past tortures, Mention of Kostas, Mentioned Ferdinand von Aegir, Mentioned mental issues, Mentioned psoriasis, Mild Blood, Murder, POV Hubert von Vestra, Pre-Time Skip, Self-bodyshaming Hubert, Spoilers, Swearing, What a warm loving family Vestras are, mentioned Hubert von Vestra parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:08:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26561926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N0L1M374NG3R3/pseuds/N0L1M374NG3R3
Summary: Hubert remembers the night an intruder caught him in the Thermal facilities of Garreg Mach and provides his POV on the events leading him to confront Byleth Eisner (as in An Inconvenience an Revelations).
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Hubert von Vestra
Series: Huleth (bilingual) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902814
Kudos: 5





	Ginger

**Author's Note:**

> Hubert is a swearing, cold blooded, desacrating douche.  
> Not overly graphic depiction of murder, blood and other pleasantries to follow.  
> And.. did I already mention swearing?  
> Can be read separately from An Inconvenience and Revelations.  
> As per usual, the Italian text will be released shortly after with a bit of extra polishing (I'm always better satisfied with the English version).  
> Again, please bear with any mistakes and typos and do feel free to tell me when wording is amiss.

_Father, why are all the children weeping?  
_ _They are merely crying son  
_ _O, are they merely crying, father?  
_ _Yes, true weeping is yet to come  
_ Nick Cave,  _[The Weeping Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqhOVY58zIo) _

Since their first interactions, Hubert had been rather pleased to notice his menacing approach managed to puzzle his professor. He would rather had her downright scared of him but, given her stoic demeanour, his was probably quite an accomplishment.  
He couldn't expect to get her any more pliant… for the time being.  
There had been a moment, though, in those last weeks: something had changed all of a sudden and she had started acting wary when he was around, looking more self-conscious and perhaps more ill-at-ease than ever before.  
Back then, Hubert couldn't guess whether he should rejoice or worry about it: either she was learning to fear him, which could be good, or she had something to hide from him, something she felt precautious if not guilty about- which could prove a bother for Lady Edelgard  _and_ for him.  
But then, the balance he had carefully pursued through a complex alchemy of tension had dramatically reversed, again, and not to his advantage.  
She looked more confident than ever now, while he was the one avoiding her or forcing himself to deal with her despite the feeling of abashment that crept in whenever he was in her presence, whenever she looked at him with those same periwinkle eyes that must have witnessed his nudity and, above all, his bare hands.  
_His bare hands_ .  
Hubert grimaced, staring at the jacket carelessly tossed on his bed.  
His hands were a private matter.  
He didn't care for his body, body is a machine after all, just made of flesh and as so defective and dull. But his hands were something else entirely: they were his tools, a connection between his mind and reality, and he needed them, he almost lost them once, and they still resented it.  
Plus, they troubled him still, and were… ugly.  
He could afford his unattractiveness, truly, could afford being unsightly.  
Not that he was blind: he knew his features weren’t completely repelling, yet something in his look came up as deeply unsettling and, since pleasing wasn’t truly in his nature, he opted for learning how to profit from it and put it to good use for his lady.  
For body was a machine, it had to be efficient on multiple levels: his hands, though, weren't efficient as he would have liked them to be.  
And they were more than unsettling, he knew- they were  _nasty.  
_ Since his hands were the only part of his body he truly felt conscious about, he had allowed only few people to see them (well, except for those whom he tortured and slain).  
Lady Edelgard knew of them, and Vestra physician, of course- this couldn’t be helped.  
That von Hevring gentleman, too (it had been an accident but, as it turned out, Master Sloth was discretion in the flesh; moreover, he provided Hubert rather useful suggestions about certain seasonal ailments affecting his joints). And then there was that... wench from the stables, seven years ago - she didn’t matter anymore.  
And now, Byleth Eisner.  
She was the last person on earth he would ever introduce to the subject.  
For the sake of discretion, Hubert had even obtained special permission from the Academy to be excused perpetually from any activity which might involve ungloving his hands. Vestra's physician had complied and signed all the required certificates, needless to say, with his stolid father’s blessing: after all, his hands were a product of his ferocity, weren't they?  
It would be a scandal if the heir to the third most eminent family in the Empire had proved a cripple.  
It had been pledged before the Academic Council that Hubert suffered from psoriatic disorder, which was true- a familiar disease: as he had come to know, freshly appointed aristocrats would sell their souls for anything of the sort, as they regarded hereditary infirmities like some kind of fashionable adornment, rather than as the scourge they truly were. A pity psoriasis had little to do with his ailments and scars.  
And who was to blame for revealing to Byleth his only personal secret, the only private thing about him not directly involving Edelgard's path and their designs for Adrestia?  
He was.  
He so poorly witted to decide he could use the Baths to cleanse from… that knave.  
He who hadn't remembered, in his hurry, to lock the door-  _what a dunce_ !  
He whose hearing had failed him, not alerting him in time that someone was approaching.

Hubert stood up and checked the pendulum over the small wall-mounted fireplace he wasn’t going to light before Solstice had come. The clock read half an hour to two: he marvelled at how earlier he had completed his nightly rounds.  
That morning he had forgotten his window shut: now he opened it and thrust its shutters out on the quayside, bordered by sign-lamps among the flower beds and lit by a shining plenilune.  
It was a clear, sharp night: sentries patrolled the ramparts between the pier and the Monastery bridge and, from his window, looked nothing but pale ribbons of light shivering against the stone.  
For a while he lingered against the window frame, arms folded: the room, damp as a cellar due to those same high ceilings and thick stone walls which so efficiently kept it fresh during hot summer days, was rapidly cooling at the night’s chill. Still, Byleth’s warm scent ( _could it be ginger? Not very Fódlan-like, he’d give her that_ ) didn’t seem to fade.  
He glanced at his bed, dimly lit by a candle despite the moonlight flooding in as the satellite dived into the West.  
A simple red wool blanket was draped over a canvas sheet – the Academy provided much finer bed-sets but Hubert carefully avoided excessive comforts, positively persuaded such indulgence could weaken the spirit.  
The jacket laid atop the bed foot, off-white, slightly worn- the colour of crude linen before being bleached.  
His initials, HvV, had been embroidered on it many years before by Edelgard’s unskilled hands, while the garment cloth had been spun by his mother herself during one of those many days she spent beside her window, in the company of the only visible view from Vestra mansion: an uninterrupted moorland, interspersed here and there by marshes which mirrored the sky in a mirage of mists.  
From what little he had seen in Byleth's room, the mercenary must have travelled beyond the borders of Fódlan: the spicy scent which reminded him of Riegan, now tenaciously soaking his jacket to its fibres, must have come from Dagdan ports, or perhaps from Almyra.  
Recalling the vibrant stole she had produced from the trunk at her bed-foot, Hubert had no doubt about Byleth Eisner having grown in warm and colourful places: her dislike for cold weather couldn’t be explained otherwise, and neither her incarnate which, golden as she had arrived at Garreg Mach, was now turning to an ivory shade due to the professor spending most of her days in class rather than in the open.  
The same couldn’t be said for him: the Adrestian region he grew up in before leaving for Enbarr was misty, wild, drenched for seven months in fogs and storms and soaked in muddy greens throughout the year’s remains- which made it only suitable for cattle and flies.  
Born on the wintry Faerghus borders, her mother direly resented such weather: as certain physicians lavished with money by his father liked to spout, she suffered from melancholic complexion, which rendered her easy a prey to languors.  
During those “crises” of hers she did barely more than spinning, her dull eyes occasionally turning from the loom to the window- always to find it grey with rain, marshes-green.  
When asked why she used to craft such big shirts for such a tiny son, she simply answered she was going to store them for his older years, when she would be gone.  
A prophecy to be fulfilled at last, since she fell ill and died when Hubert was seven – perhaps let herself fade away, as he believed, like snow in the rain.  
Shortly after he left for Enbarr: the buzzing streets of the capital and its lavish buildings replaced the moorlands dismal copse, the grim wails and echoes that haunted them: sky at Enbarr was always cold clear- crafted in porcelain, one would say.  
As for Hubert, he had never felt homesick once in his lifetime: in fact he was rather partial to mountains, though he had seen them only in few occasions, those rare times he was brought on visits to her mother’s relatives, many years before her demise.

Hubert rested his head against the window frame: leaving his closet unguarded and the jacket in it had proved unwise, yet figuring anyone might want to steal it required a considerable exercise in imagination- one he wasn’t overly enthusiast to apply himself to. After all, it was just an old piece of cloth, worn, uncouth, definitely unbefitting a nobleman wardrobe: even the last baronet scion at the Academy wore better nightgowns, he’d bet.  
The idea had crossed his mind that behind his jacket disappearance there might be a mistake, a poor joke or some weird attempt at intimidation: the more he pondered on the matter, though, the less he was convinced the culprit was to be found among Garreg Mach students.  
And here was when he had decided to turn to his professor: he couldn’t say precisely why, but he sensed she might know more than she let out. After all, her attitude toward him had changed in those last few days, had it not? Wasn’t it plausible that she had seen something, that she had any idea, yet vague, of the events occurred _that_ night? He could not, in all earnest, discard such possibility.  
Daddy Jeralt’s daughter Byleth Eisner couldn’t possibly ignore the presence of intruders at the Academy.  
And that intruders  _were,_ in fact, a thing, Hubert knew without the shadow of a doubt, since  _that_ same night he had killed one with his own, n asty hands, warping the corpse shortly after to a place far enough from the monastery that nobody would ever suspect the slaying had taken place in Garreg Mach.

The wretch was an acolyte of the late Kostas: somehow he had escaped massacre at Red Canyon and was now looking for some sick revenge on the young lords his boss had failed to slay.  
Hubert had caught the sod wandering around Garreg Mach while on his way back from Enbarr, in that broad strip of wooded land which ran along the region’s main road.  
It had been a coincidence: usually, Hubert travelled by mean of a peculiar Dark Arts spell, one whose technique he himself had perfected over the years. Warping allowed him to teleport across considerable distance – the further his destination, the higher the toll magic was going to exact on his energies later.  _But still...  
_ That day he had been warping more than he should have: he was experienced enough to know he’d better not ask too much of himself, so he landed few yards from Garreg Mach’s weald with the intent of enjoying a refreshing stroll in the quiet of the night. He had just entered Mach estate through a copse at its borders that he knew was poorly scouted, if at all, when he saw  him.  
Hubert grinned.  
The moron was in a complete daze and kept wandering around the woods, boots tattered, the rags he wore as clothes stained with blood and fluids of more or less fathomable nature.  
Taking care of him was going to be a milk run but, given he had spent too much magic for his own good that day, the thing had to be carried out in a more… traditional fashion- which eventually led to him dirtying himself in the process.  
In order to get rid of the corpse, though, he was left with just one viable option. Sighing, he warped-  _again_ .  
He remembered a ditch amidst the weald, some miles away: there he landed, and kicked the corpse face up in the mud.  
He felt he could faint there and then: limping, he reached a thereby stump and almost collapsed over it.  
They were alone- he and the ditched douche-bag, that is. Hubert breathed heavily.  
It took him some time to recover – only whispers of wind around them, the vastness of night dwelling to the few castaway crickets that lasted through summer and, in the woods at their back, wild night beasts dancing for survival.  
Every so often he gazed at the dead man's eyes, yellow with bile, staring blindly at the starry sky above their heads.  
He felt neither remorse for his deed, yet another, nor resentment for the killed.  
In fact, the two of them differed only as to clarity and common sense: it takes due time and a proper place for revenge, doesn’t it?, Hubert thought to himself. Pain and stupidity provide poor advice on matters of vengeance – as the wretch had learnt at the cost of his life.  
Yet, Hubert could almost sympathize with him. He too harboured similar feelings, though more articulate, he hoped, and towards more than one person: his father, Duke Von Aegir – the senior, not that dumb son of his: a spineless coxcomb, bereft of even the slightest glimmer of spirit – and several other figures of varying importance through the Imperial ranks.  
Not to mention  _him_ \- their esteemed ally. Volkhard von Arundel.

Midnight had long since passed when Hubert resolved to set off for Garreg Mach.  
As soon as he reached the monastery, infiltrating its walls with what little concentration he had managed to recover, Hubert realized the wilderness had done a wonderful job in covering with its tang the revolting stench that soaked his clothes. Courtesy of that Kostas’s fellow, no doubt.  
Returning to his room in such state was out of the question.  
He could really use a bath now- with a bit of a trick, of course.  
He’d better discard teleportation, for now: he would still need it later to gain his room unnoticed. Excessive resort to magic could lead to disagreeable consequences, and he had to steel himself for the crucial weeks there were to come.  
Luckily, Hubert had never felt above practising certain... manual skills: at times, he thought the reason laid precisely in his hands. Had they been elegant, smooth- like it was the case with Von Aegir, so proud of them to show them off every time he could (Hubert had little doubt he and Gloucester made use of lotions and powders and the idea amused him to no end) - perhaps he would have been more reluctant.  
But no, he didn’t really give a damn about getting them dirty: more to be gained than lost, as they say.  
He set to enter the Bath through one of its backdoors, but found the main gate unbarred: picking its lock was child’s play for him. He didn’t have time to congratulate himself, though, since right then a particularly sharp-eared sentry (possibly drawn by the clicking lock pins) felt it his duty to climb the Palace stairs and take a closer look, forcing him to hurriedly slip inside the building and haste to the facilities to get out of sight. After waiting a while, breath bated to catch even the faintest patter, and since no sound was to be heard from the entrance hall, Hubert finally headed to the dressing rooms and then to the baths, washing as quickly as he could.  
As he finished, he proceeded to wipe away what dirty water had splashed on the floor: given the situation, he ought to be careful not to leave traces behind. He was still slogging around when a strange sound quivered through the room: a sigh, a breath, a quaver- something soft and sharp at the same time. At first he thought of a wild beast, but then he caught sight of a shadow withdrawing to the door.  
It couldn’t be a guard- they would intervene in a much more peremptory fashion- but it certainly could be another interloper, Hubert couldn’t tell whether harmless or ill-intentioned. Had he been followed (and if so, how the heck had they managed)? Was the intruder from Kostas’ bunch too?  
Of course there was a chance the snoop was just another student: were such the case, the only thing to be concerned about would be him or her noticing there was blood in the water – a possibility that, however implausible, Hubert couldn’t afford to trifle with.  
Of course he did what he could to track the snooper, but the sod’s quick wit bested him. The bastard was swift and left no traces- save for Hubert’s jacket, which had inexplicably disappeared from his locker.  
As  if it wasn’t enough, a bit of a commotion started in the hall right as he was headed back to the dressing rooms with the intent of tearing them apart for any clue: something must have attracted the otherwise not overly sedulous guards, who had finally decided to come and do the job they were paid for.  
Captain Eisner should really have taught his men some discipline, Hubert snarled to himself making a last effort to warp into his apartment, where he crashed ungracefully, as soaked and bare as a drowned rat.

In the following days, Hubert tried and tried to piece together what had happened at the Baths: yet, the elements in his possession were simply too few he could even venture a guess. Sooner or later, he would have probably let the subject drop... hadn’t he noticed the curious shift shortly after occurred in Byleth Eisner’s attitude.  
It didn’t took long before he started wondering if those two apparently separate events might in truth share a connection of whichever sort. He even went as far as surmising the mysterious intruder might in fact be none else but Byleth; on second thought, however, he dismissed such scenario, as it seemed unlikely to him that she, of all the people, could ever feel either so intimidated or abashed to flee like a schoolgirl at the mere sight of a naked man.  
Their dear professor used to be a hireling, after all, didn’t she? She must be accustomed to promiscuity – not that he disapproved: he wasn’t a prude – and had probably seen more naked men than anyone else in the Academy (the idea somehow stirred him, but he chose to let it slide).  
Be what it may, he was quite positive that, had it been her that night, she wouldn’t have batted an eye.  
He could almost picture her staring coldly at him, perhaps even greeting him like they’d just met at the marketplace, most likely inquiring what had brought him to the Baths at such a late hour – a fitting question for her as well, but which she would possibly answer with her unnerving candour.  
What an odd, annoying creature she was.

\- Well, well, if it isn’t our night owl… - he sneered to himself as he peeked from the sill: the object of his ruminations was in fact crossing the open space right under his window.  
She proceeded unhurriedly: her strange cape had been replaced with a warmer winter cloak and the old stole Hubert was already acquainted with was draped over her shoulders.  
Even from up there he thought he could almost scent ginger floating around her frame, and it stirred in him such a vivid feeling that he briskly backed from the sill as if someone had slapped him in the face.  
Right then, Byleth Eisner raised her eyes to the dorms and looked at his open window, at the faint candle light gleaming inside.  
Hidden behind the window frame Hubert saw her dither, her eyes lingering in his direction: it looked like she was waiting for him to show up.  
Then, as if out of sudden change of mind, she shrugged and turned to the wharf; soon, her figure disappeared behind the corner of the greenhouse.  
Irritated, Hubert slammed the window shut and returned to the desk, dropping into his armchair – a sombre faldstool with a thick, stiff velvet cushion on it, quite different from Byleth’s cosy chair. Closing his eyes he joined hands to rest them on his lips, a position that helped him concentrate.

Byleth’s diary now came to his mind, which he had seized the opportunity to deftly subtract from her (with the aid of a bit of a distraction, that is): as much as he had perused it, he couldn’t find a single note not pertaining to academic activities – a part from few personal annotations of little or no consequence that nonetheless stirred his petty curiosity.  
Truth be told, he was rather impressed by the quantity of small remarks and lively drawings she could get to fit in such small pages: what Byleth Eisner lacked in expressivity, she certainly had gained in artistry – and she did possesses quite a talent at that, Hubert conceded.  
He smiled reluctantly as he recalled some sketches she had drawn on the flap of her diary, likely at the start of the Academic year, to help her associate names with faces. He hadn’t been able to suppress a smirk at some of them: Manuela Casagranda with a colossal garter wrapping her head (the caricature had a certain blasphemous flavour to it that he greatly appreciated, as the garter wore a Seiros symbol over it); Seteth, squinting, nose curled up in disdain (“ _he’s judging you_ ”, she had hastily jotted down); Caspar, full mouthed, face dotted with crumbles; Petra haunted by a positively vicious looking dictionary and finally Bernadetta- a tiny cactus trying to snatch a cake from under a table with the aid of a very long and sharp crochet.  
He wasn’t ashamed to admit he had been curious to find how ( _if )_ the professor would manage to make fun of him too but, to his slight disappointment, his caricature was missing- and Lady Edelgard’s as well.  
Perhaps she had preferred not to beat a dead horse: when it came to his countenance, the wittiest satirist could hardly compete with Mother Nature’s own sense of humour.

But enough of that: he must not let himself be diverted, not even when restlessness and fatigue got the best of him assailing his mind wind a swarm of distracting thoughts – Byleth Eisner in front of him, sitting, her beautiful fingers intertwined on the desk, her beautiful feet  bare on the crumpled rug ; Byleth  bending over the trunk,  s hapes peering from the folds of her cape and, finally, Byleth’s eyes fixed on him, a shadow of mockery in their impassi ve blue.  
While his existence revolved essentially around politics, Edelgard's struggle for dominance over the Adrestia and, ultimately, machinations and violence, Hubert knew all to well he was only in his twenties.  
At such age, it was no marvel he could get dazzled by… pulchritude, so to speak – if only, for merely biological reasons. As were equally natural some confusion and a certain... how to say… turmoil (he was finding himself at a loss for words more often than he would have liked).  
Biology aside, though, he had committed to always being above his own frailties; to ferociously restraining them within a private sphere, and never allowing them to spill over from where they had been confined.  
At present, his absolutely unjustified discomfiture around Byleth Eisner only threatened to hinder him in his efforts: how was he supposed to intimidate her and assure Lady Edelgard’s safety when he was the one to avoid confrontation, slinking off like a bloody thief?  
All he needed to do was purging facts of emotions, putting them in a broader perspective: after all, being dramatic didn’t really suit his style.  
About his hands, well, as infuriating the fact that she  _might_ know — provided she had stayed long enough to catch sight of them, of course — there was a silver lining to it, wasn’t there? Byleth Eisner had spent most of her life as a hireling and, as such, she was likely to underestimate anyone who hadn’t endured those  same  hardships she was well acquainted with instead. There was a chance his wounds might earn him her respect: from a certain angle, they weren’t so different from war injuries – though that war of his (of theirs, his and Edelgard’s as well) wasn’t of the overt, public kind ( _not yet_ ).  
It was a good thing that she had seen he was up for anything, that he was trained to endure and knew the true meaning of pain. Her mercenary upbringing would allow her to appreciate to which extent he differed from his Academy fellows, for the most part spoiled, self-conceited brats who played war lacking the guts to sustain real warfare, body and wit, as it ought to be.  
In this regard, Byleth Eisner needed to know he would be a match for her: her past granted her no leverage with him.

Relieved at such thoughts, Hubert stood up. Grabbing his jacket, he moved to the chipped old bowl occupying the left corner of his room.  
A tall pewter pitcher rested next to it, filled to the brim with icy- cold water: the marquis poured its content into the bowl, lingering a while over his own reflection before he plunged the jacket in.  
Then he seized a slab of dried soap and started to absent-mindedly scour the linen, until the bowl grew white with foam.  
Rubbing and cold were rapidly flushing his hands; on their skin, paler scars looked like filigree, spiderwebs, trails made of ash.  
As ginger mingled with soap, Hubert continued to rub.

**Author's Note:**

> (Also, Hubert is a more fairly-featured twin of young Nick Cave, fight me UU).


End file.
